Third Pole Environment
T P E
YAO Tandong
17/10/2019 The Third Pole refers to Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings. It covers 5 million km2 in area with an elevation higher than 4000m by average, its behavior impacts more than 2 billion people. The Third Pole is also called the Asian Water Tower
Tianshan Altai Mountains The Pamirs mountain
Kunlun Altun Mountains Qilian Karakorum Mountain Mountain Tanggula Mountain Mount Kailash Nyenchen Tanglha Qinling Mountains Mountains The Himalayas Hengduan Mountains Third Pole Environment (TPE) program
Tandong Yao (China) TPE entered UNESCO-UNEP- Lonnie Thompson (USA) SCOPE flagship program in Volker Mosbrugger (Germany) 2011 Deliang Chen (Sweden) David Madlen (ICIMOD) TPE workshops
th 6 TPE Workshop The 4th Third Pole Environment (TPE) Workshop May 16-18, Columbus, USA April 1-3, 2013, Dehradun, India STEP-TPE-Pan-TPE and TPEC
North Pole
Third Pole TPEC Pan-TPE PAN THIRD POLE ENVIRONMENT South Pole STEP Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Major topics
Westerly-monsoon Anthropogenic impacts interaction and its and environmental security impact
Asian Water Tower Plateau uplifting and changes and their far-reaching impact impact
Resource and energy Ecosystems and eco- STEP assessment security
Ecological buffer Environment and disaster capacity and its optimization
Biodiversity Green development conservation and pathways sustainable use Major focus
Focusing on water, ecosystem and human activity, particularly on changing Asian Water Towers and their impacts and on adaptation strategy with the cooperation between scientists and policy makers
Urgent critical questions for Asian Water Tower
• How much water stored in and flew out from Asian Water Towers? • How do the conversions between vapor-solid-liquid water phases impact environment in China and Asia or even the world? • How to improve the function of the water and ecology buffer to promote the sustainability of China and Asia or beyond? Earth system science approach of ground/space observing networks and modeling intergration TPE has an international alliances with scientists throughout the world
CAS Overseas Centers TPE global networks
Central Asia Sweden Beijing Kathmandu UAS Germany Myanmar Kathmandu Kenya Sri Lanka TPE and PAN-TPE have linkage with International Programs and Organizations
世界气象组织 WMO 联合国环境署 UNEP
International Programs International programs on on scientific themes regional environment TPE is a partnership of WMO in High Mountain Weather and Climate TPE is jointly addressing global climate change issues through UNEP networks
UN SPBF TPE is coordinating CORDEX Flagship Pilot Studies (FPS) on high resolution modelling over the Third Pole Upcoming TPE events
October 29-30, WMO High Mountain Summit, Geneva
November 29-30, TPE Workshop, Frankfurt
Tandong Yao, Lonnie Thompson, Volker Mosbruggger, Deliang Chen
are organizing and coordinating Thank you!